Welcome back, my fine friends, to a new year. New year, new planners. While the Hobonichi Techo has got a pretty firm lock on my heart, I do recognize that it’s not going to be perfect for everyone, so when the good people of Exaclair reached out to me many moons ago to see if I would be interested in taking the Quo Vadis Plan & Note for a spin, I was all for it. This is a planner coming from a good paper family (Quo Vadis, Clairefontaine, Rhodia are all of the same family), and I loved the Quo Vadis Miniweek back in my pre-Hobonichi days.

– All of my friends have decided that the texture of the cover resembles the peel of a banana. I am now questioning the sanity of all of my friends.

This is the Desk size Plan & Note in Violet. The cover is a rubberized soft-touch cover, somewhat but not quite like the Rhodia Webnotebook in texture, of a mostly firm, semi-flexible cardboard stock. The binding is designed to lay flat, and can be bent back on itself for added firmness and convenience when writing on the go.

On the go. The phrase sounded normal popping out of my head, and now looking at it on the screen is beginning to break down into inexplicable nonsense. How does one get on the go? Is the go going, or is it gone?

A matching purple elastic band holds the notebook closed. Size-wise, I was worried at the “desk” designation – I pictured some vast and endless windswept plain of fountain pen friendly paper, bound by the gods upon some ancient varnished desk. But who would need an elastic to hold that sort of notebook closed? Who would ever be able to carry such a thing anywhere to need to keep it closed? My fears were allayed by the actual facts of reality — the “Desk” plan and note, at 6″ x 8.5″, is an easily portable and slim planner, large enough to be useful while retaining the convenience of a semi-compact size. For at least three months I’ve been carrying this planner around (packed always next to my guilt at not having reviewed it yet), rarely taking care to protect it in any meaningful way. It’s important to see how such things hold up to the rigors and abuse of ordinary life.

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The tell-tale puncture marks indicative of a feline presence

Looking close, you can find signs of wear, but the planner is still looking sharp. If you take even the slightest amount of care (i.e. not throwing it unprotected into a giant lunch bag full of knives, misshapen objects, and miniaturized kitchen implements) I’d wager you’ll still have a sharp looking planner by the time 2018 rolls around.

Unnecessarily dappled shading brought to you by my backyard trees

On to the features. In the front, a standard Personal Notes page, a 2017 reference calendar; in the back, an inexplicable nine pages devoted to contacts. In spite of all the signs, it IS 2017. Who is using this many, or any, planner pages to keep an analog record of contacts in a book only designed to be carried around for the course of one year? If you really keep an analog record of contacts, I hope you have a nice, separate book dedicated to such records, one that is not bound to any particular year. If a contacts section absolutely must be present, give it one, two pages at most. The rest of that space should go to notes, which this notebook currently only has two pages (a front and back) dedicated to. A Plan & Note planner should push the envelope a little more in the note department. Perhaps have the back free notes section include more than one type of layout to better facilitate brainstorming. Instead of all lined pages, you could have two dot grid, two grid, two blank, two lined, etc. This giant contacts section feels like a missed opportunity.

The entire time I’ve been trying to edit this picture on my phone in bed, the cat has been trying to stand on my face, my hands, or both

Back to the front of the notebook, to the first intriguing feature–the Anno-Planner. It’s a two-page spread encompassing all of 2017 that gives each day a little usable line. The second page header bills this as “The Organization of your year at a single glance.” It makes me think of the Bullet Journal Calendex layout. I feel like you’d need to develop your own legend involving some color-coding and symbols to get maximum usability out of this feature, but it holds a lot of promise.

Top: March-April; bottom: January-February.

After the Anno-Planner, we have a feature I can’t live without–monthly grid pages. A monthly grid helps me best visualize my life, especially working night shift as I currently do. The layout is oriented sideways to allow for maximum writing space in each square, which feels a little odd but is admittedly useful. My biggest issue with these monthly pages is the repeating of lines at the end/beginning of months. Look at the last week of January and the first week of February up there. It is the same line twice. I find this visually off-putting and potentially confusing. At the very least, don’t print the dates in the same color–where you have overlap, use something like a light grey to print the beginning of February that’s on the January spread, and vise-versa the end of January that’s on the February spread. Or, given that the next line is right there, why print the overlap at all? This issue pops up on every monthly spread; several even end up with two weeks printed twice. It’s wasteful, inefficient, and really throws off my groove. If you’ve got page real estate to spare, leave it blank so it can be used for something like …notes!

I really need more commitment to the Note half of this Plan & Note theme

The rest of the meat of the planner is devoted to the year’s worth of weekly spreads. Each day gets an equal amount of space (which is really nice especially when trying to plan in a business that is open seven days a week), with a section at the end of each week just for notes (notes! finally!!). No complaints here; it’s a solid, standard weekly layout. Each page has a perforated tear-off corner in the bottom, to mark where you are in the notebook and theoretically make it easier to flip to. I prefer ribbon markers for that purpose, but the concept works. I might prefer the perforated corners to be on the top, for even easier flipping. After the weekly spread, there is a monthly grid for January 2018, a 2018 reference calendar, and a 2018 Anno-Planner spread to ease the transition into 2018.

I don’t know if any paper exists that does a decent job with the ink of those little stamps at the bottom. They were forged at the bottom of a volcano out of the decanted acid derived from demon blood. Probably

The pages of the whole planner consist of 90gsm white paper, very fountain pen friendly with no bleedthrough and minimal show-through. The paper shows off shading fairly well (not so much on the sheen factor), with a decent dry-time between around 7 and 11 seconds for fountain pen ink. Most surprisingly, I was able to lay down some watercolors with no bleedthrough and no noticeable buckling of the paper. Although the overall format of this planner doesn’t lend itself to the type of planning/journaling where watercoloring would typically be found, it can be done. Of course, with this brand I expected good paper; thankfully, Quo Vadis delivers.

(Exaclair provided this product at no charge for reviewing purposes–opinions entirely my own)

Prior to the Hobonichi, I used an extra small Moleskine to keep track of my work schedule and overtime hours, but the paper was terrible. I also had a tiny Quo Vadis Miniweek to have good paper in my life, but the Miniweek didn’t have the monthly overview I needed to plan out my overtime at work. And I’m sure an assortment of various other planners or pseudo-planners waltzed through. My life was a shambling mess of too many not-quite-perfect planners. So why did I go for the Hobonichi Techo? Probably pretty pictures layered with dream-colored filters on Instagram. I too could have a neatly written and washi-taped-up life, if only I bought this fabled amalgamation of Tomoe River paper and unicorn wishes.

here let me bookmark the tl;dr version for you

The short review: I’m buying another planner for 2017. And getting a leather cover for it, so I’m planning on continuing this tradition for a while. The end.

Case closed. Mystery solved.

I ordered the English Hobonichi Planner with Custard cover from the Hobonichi store. It also came with a clear Cover-on-Cover, which I abandoned pretty promptly. It felt too slippery? It made the whole thing ever so slightly wider? For whatever reason, I didn’t like it, took it off my planner, and last I recall it was in the trunk of my car some months ago. No idea if it’s still there now. No desire to find it.

Mostly because my trunk is an interdimensional portal to a netherworld of paper cuts and old iPhone cases

The Custard and Cream color polyester cover is beautiful. Choosing just one of the vibrant covers was hard, but I’m happy with my choice. The drawback to abandoning the protective Cover-on-Cover is that the actual cover has become a little dirty over the course of the year. I could try to wash it off. Or I could order a leather cover for next year. The responsible choice is obvious.

Buy the leather cover AND a new polyester cover. Obviously

The standard Hobonichi cover comes with a lot of little pockets that I like in theory and decoratively, but haven’t actually used that much. The bookmarks and pen loops, however, are essential to my life. I keep one bookmark on the current monthly overview, and the other on the current day. The little tabs at the bottom of the bookmarks weight them just enough to help them lay where they need to and make them easy to grab hold of to move. I think the pen loops are intended to be used as a sort of locking device, the idea being you put one pen through both loops and it holds the cover shut, but I’ve done that approximately zero times since trying it once. I prefer to put one pen in each loop, keep my options open.

And the book open, since it’s not locked shut with writing implement

I will not delve much into the extra content, such as size charts, conversion tables, country codes, national holidays, information about Japanese geography, dining, etc. because while these are interesting, they are not the practical-use stuff I’m interested in analyzing. Functionally, the Hobonichi Techo contains the following sections: yearly overview (2016 & 2017), four months at a time overview, monthly overview, daily pages with extra blank page at the beginning of each month, and blank dot grid pages.

The yearly overview is good for quick-glance planning with the strange rotating-pattern schedule I have. The four months at a time overview has left me stumped. I have not yet hit on a good use for it in my life. Maybe if I planned out exercise routines? Planning out dinners? Format-wise, it doesn’t work as well for planning out my work schedule as the monthly overview does.

Here’s the section that has eliminated the need for my little Moleskine planner. This format is perfect for planning out my work/life, and easier for me to visualize my overtime sign up especially given that I work the night shift. There’s just enough room to write down everything I need. Monthly overview, don’t ever change.

On to the daily. I lasted about 1 month writing large fancy things in the middle of pages and filling in words around them. Once I settled into a pattern of just writing whatever I want I’ve done much better. Usually, it’ll be a summary of the day. Sometimes to-do lists. Sometimes doodles, or stickers, or recipes, or whatever. Really, truly whatever. A book this fancy may come with an intimidation factor, perhaps, that causes some people to abandon the effort. Don’t try to force it. Don’t wreck yourself trying to make each page some grand work of art. Let it be what it will be. For me and my life, it’s just enough room to summarize the occurrings of any given day.

The beginning of each month features a “Coming Up!” page, which I’ve used backwards from what I think is the intended purpose. I use it to document an overall summary of the month – the books I have read, the new recipes I have tried, the days I got more than 10,000 steps, the major events that occurred in that month. I’m sure it also works great for making plans if that’s what you’re into. Bonus, the Hobonichi includes half pages for the last 2 weeks of the previous year and the first week of the next year, which is great if you’re just starting a Hobonichi but I’m wondering how I will utilize this transitioning from 2016 to 2017 Hobonichi.

The blank dot grid is where I’ve kept track of the pen and ink combos that I’ve used in the notebook throughout the year. The Hobonichi is known for its use of the magical Tomoe River paper, a substance that is both thin and fountain pen friendly (and friendly to other things like watercolor, but I haven’t gotten that highfalutin this year. I have some mini watercolor pans in a tin. I guess the next step involves actually using them). Tomoe River paper can take a lot of ink without any bleedthrough, but being such thin paper you can absolutely see through it. This may be a drawback or dealbreaker for some people, but it keeps the planner relatively slim and portable while still being wonderful for fountain pen ink. Only you can decide how showthrough impacts you.

Only you can prevent forest fires

Will I be patient enough for the Hobonichi to be in stock thru Jetpens? Or will I cave and order it at the first available second direct from the Hobonichi website? We’ll find out on September 1st, 11AM Japan time if I can resist the temptation.

Update: Of course I wasn’t patient enough to wait! The Hobonichi website on the first day of ordering is an exercise in frustration and futility–the servers historically have never been beefed up enough to handle the worldwide demand for a planner we really won’t actually be using for several months. After about 8 or more attempts in which my cart kept repeatedly getting deleted, I finally managed to place my order on September 1st. It was shipped September 8th, and made it all the way from Japan to my apartment complex office in NC on September 13th. As for JetPens, the planners came in stock on September 15th, and I completely missed the email about it. The only thing you don’t get from JetPens are the Hobonichi Store Exclusives (this year, a small toast-shaped plate and a 3 color pen), nor access to the accessories (I also ordered a planner ruler and a pencil board).

I’ve heard good things about Quo Vadis planners, so when I saw one last Miniweek on sale at my local pen store, I jumped on it (even though they were all out of covers). I tweeted of my bountiful gain but lack of cover, as I proceeded to affix some soft polyurethane-type material to my Miniweek with tacky glue to serve as a DIY cover. Then, lo and behold, Quo Vadis tweeted at me to say they had an extra Miniweek cover that they would give me! Some tedious craft-glue-undoing later, a joyous little planner for 2014 was assembled. Thanks to Quo Vadis for the cover (and thanks to Office Supplies and More for having had the planner on sale).

Coin for reference. For some reason, 1 euro cent was the first coin I was able to find. If you’ve never seen a euro cent in person before, they are adorably tiny

The Miniweek is small and simple; the Texas cover serving as something to protect the little refill from the world. It’s a smooth polyurethane-like cover made with no PVC. There’s no branding, just the darker recessed accent mark and raised decorative “stitching” around the edges. It feels smooth to the touch—the kind of notebook you want to rub on your face. Time will tell if the cover will hold up over the course of multiple refill years.

Tiny calendars so I can see how far into the future that I STILL won’t have certain choice holidays off.

Being so slim, there isn’t much extra to the Miniweek. There’s two pages for personal information, little 2014 and 2015 calendars, address pages, and note pages, in addition to the main meat of the planner itself.

Work schedule, running schedule, blog schedule. And oatmeal cookies

I like that each day gets an equal amount of space. Usually planners end up short-changing the weekend on page real estate, but as someone with an unusual work schedule I appreciate having equal space to plan out my days. And they even fit in a little space for notes!

(Ignore the part where I smudged the first Pelikan M150 sample, that was almost out of ink and other such excuses) LOOK AT THAT CRISP LINE AND SHADING ON “KR3″…so beautiful…

But the best part about the Miniweek is this magical paper. It’s of an almost tissue-like thinness typically reserved for holy books, and typically not associated with the kind of paper you’d want to put a fountain pen to. But oh, how wrong you’d be. This paper holds fountain pen ink beautifully. No fuzz, no feathers, just clean, crisp lines. With such thin paper, showthrough is inevitable, but none of the fountain pens bled through (the Parker and Sheaffer rollerbals are another story). And the dry times were surprising—Diamine Ancient Copper in a Pilot Vanishing Point M nib drying within ten seconds. This is a planner made for fountain pens.

Sorry hip art deer, but I’d like you better if you were actually some kind of silk ribbon attached to the planner.

My only complaint is the lack of a bookmark. The pages are too thin to use a paper clip, so I picked up some trendy page flags to keep track of my place in the year. Something built-in would have been nice.

Also maybe something to keep it better closed would be nice? But eh, slip it in a pocket and what difference does it make

Overall the Miniweek hits a lot of points that I’m looking for in a planner. It’s small, with a nice layout, and most importantly, fountain pen friendly paper.

I know, I know. It’s 2014 now. This is a 2013 diary. Luckily, Daycraft sells a 2014 edition of this diary. I was just super slow to review this one. Sorry. And thanks to Daycraft for providing this sample.

I am not normally one to use the term “fun colors,” but that’s the only way to describe the color options for the Chromatic. You’ve got an irresistably soft-to-the-touch brightly colored polyurethane cover typical of most Daycraft notebooks, with adjacent-color accent pages inside the cover (purple for the blue, blue for the green, green for the yellow, yellow for the orange, orange for the red) and matching ribbon bookmark. And the edges on the pages! Not just a rainbow, but a thing of beauty. The cover is simple, but that bright striped rainbow is like an intricate, colorful tattoo peeking out from under the suited sleeve of a businessperson—something wild and exciting, just below the surface.

Note to self: when combining multiple images on a laptop, save often. Very often. The laptop does not have the same processing power as the desktop. You WILL regret having to make this image twice

Being slimmer than, say, the Signature Diary, comes at a cost. Here, part of that means less extras, though they’ve kept the international guides and gift ideas, and still have such useful sections as notes and income/expenses pages.

Look, it’s my work schedule! From a year ago.

You’ve got tiny calendars, next-year-planning calendars, and then the goods: week to view, with monthly overviews interspersed throughout at the appropriate intervals. The two page monthly overview is my favorite—easy for me to plan out my working schedule, note any overtime, and write out little notes for the month in the space to the side. Plus, tiny overview calendars for next month on that same spread!

This would probably be very great for someone else. Or someone who likes writing with 0.18mm gel pens.

This is the other major cost of a slim calendar (and to some extent, week to view in general): hardly any room to write. It’s doable, but microtip pens and writing small are a must. The vertically oriented days are visually appealing, but aren’t very practical, allowing only about 3 words per line. For this reason I ended up favoring the use of the Daycraft Executive Diary for my plans in 2013. But maybe this unusual format is just what you’ve been looking for. Maybe you like to write vertically. I don’t know. I don’t know you.

I would advise testing out your pens in this diary if you get it to see what works best for you

The paper does pretty well with most pens, except Pilot Varsity (a notorious pen), brush pens, and very ink-heavy pens like 1.0mm gel pens or broad nib fountain pens. Too much ink and you start to get bleedthrough. But I had no problems using an extra fine nib Lamy with Lamy blue ink. Depends on the pen, though as a general rule with such limited writing space I might would stick to microtip pens.

There aren’t many of the smaller A6 Chromatics in stock, if any, at the time I’m writing this. But I wonder, the A5 might be worth a go. Bigger surely means more room to write, which would overcome my main complaint with the Chromatic. Keep your eyes on Daycraft, maybe the color you want will soon be back in stock.

Based on the extras contained in this planner, it’s safe to say I am not fabulous enough or high-paid jetsetting business executive enough for this thing. My planner is cooler than I am. It’s ok. I accept this truth, much as I accepted this free sample from Daycraft many months ago. Of the planners I received, this one has emerged as my favorite. Many thanks to Daycraft for this sample.

Forgive me if the pictures are all out of whack. I’ve gotten a Chromebook and I’m trying to see if I can edit the pictures on it. If I can get this working, it portends well for more frequent updates!

The cover is slightly different from the Daycraft Signature standard—rather than soft, this cover is smooth, textured like some kind of metallic silver skin. That’s it, it’s obviously robot skin. Robot leather? Allegedly it’s fine Italian polyurethane, but it feels different. The cover is also, unlike the Signature Diary, a hardcover, with a neon pink elastic closure. The elastic band has held up well so far over these many months. The doorknob it loops over I go back and forth on—I like that it makes my planner look like a portal to some pocket-sized dimension; I’m annoyed at times that the little knob keeps the cover from sitting flat on the table.

You can even keep checks in the back, if you’re the kind of person who still has checks and wants a stylish place to keep them.

Comes with a matching silver ribbon bookmark, a spacious back pocket big enough to perfectly fit spare checks and other odds & ends, and four pages divided into three sections each of little perforated blank notes. You can give someone a note without having to rip any paper out, and you get 10 lined pages titled “NOTES” for your own use.

It takes special talent to edit all of these pictures such that the cream colored pages are a different cream color in every picture. Maybe one of them is sort of close enough to right.

For such a convenient size, this planner is chock-full of non-calendar bonus features. They’ve included all the extras I loved in the Signature Diary (such as the traveler’s cheat sheet of international guides with things like emergency phone numbers and what side of the road is driven on for 28 major countries), plus even more with an eye toward the world-travelling businessperson. You’ve got lists of international holidays, world time zones, international direct dialing codes, websites of governments, information on various Asian golf courses, measurement and size conversion tables, nutritional information, gift ideas, signs of the Zodiac, places to write out special dates for each month, venue lists (to keep track of the companies, shops, clinics, dentists, beauty salons, beauticians, hair salons, and hair stylists in your life), and contacts. And then there’s my favorite, the Vintage Chart: a two-page crash course in wine snobbery. For example, I would avoid the ’93 Northern Rhone, but the 2003 was an exceptional vintage. See? You too can sound almost passably knowledgeable.

My busy busy life…well, it looks more busy in the year planner overview….and hopefully this time around this picture doesn’t look so gosh-darned yellow…

The main body of the Executive Diary consists of week-to-view calendars. Each day has room for some general task planning, and each month has an overview page with a quote, a small month calendar, and some lines to plot out whatever major things you have in that month. There’s also year planner pages toward the front, and forward planner pages for 2014 toward the back. And some uselessly tiny calendars in the very front.

I’m not sure if I made this image color better, or just more differently wrong. Oh well.

The paper isn’t winning any awards. The main problem seems to be feathering wherever most liquid inks are involved, with bleedthrough on the heavier inks and showthrough on everything that’s darker than orange. Normally, I argue that a notebook is nothing without its paper, but when it comes to planners there’s a higher calling of form and function involved. The primary purpose of a planner isn’t the writing, it’s the planning. If the format is good, this alone will trump mediocre paper. This is why I will use a tiny week-to-view Moleskine (yes, Moleskine! Of all crappy paper things!) to keep track of my hours worked. I have literally hundreds of pens. It doesn’t kill me to set my fountain pens and liquid inks aside, and pick up one of my numerous gel pens, pencils, or ballpoints to use in this notebook (my favorite to use: retractable Pilot FriXion ball pens).

Stylish, sleek, and it’s held up beautifully to a solid year of abuse and being casually thrown in all kinds of bags

It’s slim, it’s tall, it’s smooth. Big enough to be useful, small enough to be convenient, durable enough to survive all year still looking sharp. I’m not even close to being an executive, but I can still appreciate the 2013 Executive Diary by Daycraft.

It’s 2013, and MAYBE YOU DON’T HAVE A PLANNER? Or maybe, in the stupor of a New Year’s hangover, you stumbled into some cut-rate box giant and picked out some unspeakably atrocious calendar to drag through the next year. Or maybe you have an incurable addiction to calendars and day planners. Whatever your deal, perhaps I have a giveaway for you.

Unless you hate pink. In which case, WOW, you are looking at the wrong giveaway.

You remember Daycraft? And their super cool planners? Well, some time last year they sent me a box of 3 spankin’ new 2013 selections. Even I cannot use that many calendar-planners, so I figured I’d share some of the love.

I’m even going to let you have the stickers

A quick run-down on the specs of this diary/planner/notebook/bound configuration of paper:

Pink / Baboon

Laminated pearl paper cover

width 106mm x height 150mm

216 pages of 60 gsm paper

Week-to-view

International holidays

Nutrition labeling information

Gift ideas

Year planner

71-week planner (WHOOPS I did not pay attention to the fact that this planner started in August 2012…I’m a little late on this giveaway, sorry. The thing was just so thin I figured there couldn’t be that many extra weeks in it. Goes to January 5th of 2014)

The paper is the same thin sort as I reviewed in my 2012 Signature Diary, so I imagine it’ll take various inks as well as that did.

I hope you like cute illustrations

Each month in 2013 starts with a little illustration and a month overview with room for notes.

No page without cuteness; see the little sheep at the bottom?

And here’s the layout for each week. There’s also a set of 4 perforated sheets in the back, each sheet divided into 3 sections, so if you need to tear off a piece of paper to give to someone, it will be an adorable piece of paper.

Now, if you’re interested in this little planner to make your year better, read on.

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THE GIVEAWAY RULES!

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To enter, just leave one comment on this post any time between now and Sunday, January 20th 11:59 PM Eastern Standard Time. Since I’m feeling crazy and like I don’t give enough of my money to the postal service, let’s have this contest open WORLD WIDE. The only people who can’t enter are people on space stations, the moon, and those otherwise residing extraterrestrially.

One winner will be picked at random from the comments section of this post. Make any kind of comment—but only one comment! Comments in excess of one shall be deleted. The comments will be numbered in the order they are received, i.e. the first comment is #1, the second #2, and so on. Because my blog doesn’t seem to number the comments on its own yet, and I STILL don’t will probably never have time/the willpower to fix it, I will again hand-number all the entries in Photoshop like I did here. The Random Integer Generator at random.org will be used to pick the number of the winner.

I’ll post the contest winner on Monday, January 21st. Winner will have one week to email me. There’s a link to my email at the top of the right sidebar.

And if you can’t wait to see if you won, here’s the link to the diary—just remember that price is in Hong Kong dollars. Good luck, and thanks to Daycraft for providing this sample!